


It Could Be a Sweet Surrender

by The_Hobbit_Ninja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adorable Grogu | Baby Yoda, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Domestic Fluff, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Good Parent Din Djarin, Grogu | Baby Yoda Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Din Djarin, Protective Grogu | Baby Yoda, Sleepy Cuddles, Sweet parent child relationship, Young Din Djarin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28818267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Hobbit_Ninja/pseuds/The_Hobbit_Ninja
Summary: Din set his helmet carefully on a small ledge above his bed, and settled into the ancient creaking mattress. He felt inexplicably uneasy as his eyes closed; it was just as dark with them open as shut. Din had always hated the dark. He no longer feared it as he had as a child, but darkness always gave him an uncomfortable feeling of powerlessness. With his helmet on it was tolerable, the night vision settings restored a sufficient feeling of control, but he’d discovered long ago how miserable it is to sleep with an insulated metal bucket over your head. The plain truth was that to him, sleep was like stepping into a hostile world without even the laws of logic to count on.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	It Could Be a Sweet Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> You’re a beauty baby child...  
> Can we go back to the world we had?  
> With a love so sweet it makes me sad  
> Can we go back to the world we had?  
> It’s the world we’ve been dreaming of
> 
> Can we go back to the world we had?  
> Cut like diamonds, we were made to last  
> Can we go back to the world we had?  
> It’s the world we’ve been dreaming of
> 
> ~Zella Day, song “1965”
> 
> Comments (positive, negetive, or indifferent) are *extremely* welcome! I love to hear from you:)

The Razor Crest lurched and grumbled as it met the forest floor. This planet seemed as good as any; apparently uninhabited, which was just about all he was looking for at the moment. Any quiet, undisturbed place to touch down for the night. Any place they won’t go looking for the child was what he really meant, but he shoved the thought aside. No need to borrow trouble. 

He deftly moved along the control panel, flipping switches and pushing buttons till the ship was firmly settled and stopped rattling. 

“Alright kid. We’ve got the planet to ourselves...better get some sleep. Early start tomorrow.” 

Din scooped the child out of his little passenger seat, settling him into his hovering cradle and towing him to the back of the ship. He parked the pod next to his own cot, patting the blankets firmly around the bundle in the pod.  
“Night, kid.”  
Flicking a few switches and pulling a cord, total darkness closed the day with a snap of finality. Uninhabited planets were always unnervingly black at night.  
Din set his helmet carefully on a small ledge above his bed, and settled into the ancient creaking mattress. He felt inexplicably uneasy as his eyes closed; it was just as dark with them open as shut. Din had always hated the dark. He no longer feared it as he had as a child, but darkness always gave him an uncomfortable feeling of powerlessness. With his helmet on it was tolerable, the night vision settings restored a sufficient feeling of control, but he’d discovered long ago how miserable it is to sleep with an insulated metal bucket over your head. The plain truth was that to him, sleep was like stepping into a hostile world without even the laws of logic to count on. In two and a half decades, he hadn’t gone a week without waking up shivering in a cold sweat from repetitive nightmares that always struck a fresh nerve. But fear was weakness, and weakness was unacceptable. Anyway, all uneasiness aside, he was exhausted. Refusing to give the phantoms of unconsciousness another thought, he forced himself to close his eyes.

The shots rang out cold and hard and shivery in his ears. Everywhere people were falling, running and falling and writhing and dying. He clung to the soft fabric of his father’s shirt, squeezing and twisting it in his fist. He clamped his eyes shut, and wished he could turn off his hearing, block out the smell and taste of smoke and death. His mother had told him where they were going; they were struggling through the panicked crowds to put him in a tiny bomb shelter shallowly underground. To him it sounded like being buried alive. His father’s hands were hot as he cupped Din’s face, the last words lost in the clattering and screaming and explosions. His mother wrapped him in her arms for one short moment, and he caught a bit of her familiar scent...lilacs and soap and oranges. Then he was lifted, and lowered. He reached out, catching the last sliver of sunlight as the doors closed above him. He jumped out of his skin as the shot rang out just above his head, adrenaline and horror running up and down his spine. The feeling of complete loneliness clogged his throat, threatening to turn to salt water and seep out of his eyes. 

Without warning, the scene changed. He felt a different kind of loneliness, less horror and more aching, suffocating grief. He realized vaguely that he was still a child. Why this was a surprise he was too miserable and exhausted to figure out.

Tears burned his eyes; his face was wet and he caught a taste of salt. He didn't realize he was making any noise until a well-meaning but cold and impassive masked figure approached. It was only then that he tried to move and found to his surprise that he was wrapped in thin bedsheets. “You are in no danger, child. Go back to sleep.” His breathing was ragged as he frantically choked back sobs, seeing his parents murdered over and over, feeling with cruel accuracy his mother running cool fingertips over his face and through his hair, lulling him to sleep, lost songs and stories, his father’s soft words and wholehearted laugh. He yearned with indescribable pain for human touch, for even a fleeting graze of friendly skin on his own. He ached for his mother’s hug, his father slinging him on his back, the caresses and physical comfort that were common, once upon a time. Suddenly the one masked figure became many. Where the others came from, he had no idea. He felt gloved hands all over him, rough unfeeling leather grating over his skin; he saw a crowd of helmets gathered around him, staring at him, mouthless voices screaming that he had to cover his face. He cried that he didn’t want to, that he wanted them to SEE him, that they should just take their helmets off and everyone would be happy! Wildly, he reached for the figure nearest him, brought his small hands to the sides of its face, and pulled up with all his strength. The helmet yielded, but to his horror there was no face underneath. The blinking lights of a droid’s “head” flashed red. Cold, mechanical arms reached the helmet out toward him. He tried to run, but a host of gloved hands held him to the spot. The droid was lowering the helmet down...it was almost over his head...he screamed for his father, begged the hands to release him...he felt the pressure and weight of the helmet on his head, and then everything was dark. He couldn’t breath, he was choking; he tried to scream but his lungs were burning for lack of oxygen. All around him, rising from whisper to scream, the masked figures chanted “This is the way, THIS IS THE WAY, THIS IS THE WAY”  
Just when he knew his lungs would explode into consuming flames, everything was gone. He felt himself falling through emptiness, felt dread of what was at the bottom crawling up his throat. The bottom was hard packed dirt that knocked every bit of breath out of him. He felt as if every bone he had was shattered, but at the sound of a sharp, menacing hummmm he was on his feet. The electricity of terror fizzled from his stomach to his fingertips; Moff Gideon stood on the other side of a raging bonfire, holding the glowing black blade of the dark saber an inch over the child’s head. As he moved, Din realized that his body was now that of an adult. He had no time to wonder how this was possible, as he had been a child only a few moments before. All logistical thoughts were driven from his frantic consciousness as Gideon slowly lowered the saber closer to the child’s ears. The baby was tied up, a cord binding his arms to his body and his legs together so escape was impossible. Din lunged toward the child, heedless of his own lack of defense. He ran straight into what felt like a solid brick wall, and was thrown backward onto the unforgiving dirt. He staggered back up and ran forward again, desperate to have the child in his arms. Again he smashed into the invisible, impenetrable wall and fell to the ground. He could see the child whimpering, almost feel it’s fear. Slowly, with a small, twisted smile, Moff Gideon lowered his saber half an inch and let it tickle the tip of the child’s ear.  
“NO! STOP IT LET HIM GO!”  
Din felt the scream tear through his body.  
The child shrieked, struggling wildly as Gideon let the darksaber burn along the top of the long, delicate green ear.  
Din threw himself against the illusive wall over and over, searing adrenaline blocking out the pain of impact, frantic with fury and miserable powerlessness. He heard Moff Gideon’s voice, impossibly carrying through the wall and the noise.  
“You call this YOUR child? You consider yourself his FATHER? What kind of father is too weak to save his baby? What kind of father can you EVER be? What kind of coward lets someone walk away with his child without putting up a fight? You’ll NEVER be enough for him.”  
He saw, with unspeakable horror, Moff Gideon pick up the child and turn toward his ship, darksaber held over his shoulder, just above the child’s burnt ear.  
“NO! YOU CAN’T TAKE HIM AWAY FROM ME!” he pounded his fist against the invisible barrier, every nerve on fire, every muscle straining towards his baby. He saw the child desperately struggling over Gideon’s shoulder, huge black eyes swimming with tears of pain and terror; the kid succeeded in wiggling free of one of the pinching cords, reached his tiny arms out, wordlessly begging for Din to come for him. Din sank to his knees, exhausted, misery coursing through and seeping out of him like blood.  
“Please…” he gasped, hardly audible to himself, let alone Gideon. “Please don’t...you can’t take him away from me…”  
He tried to stand up, but tripped-  
With the motion of falling in his stomach, he found himself sitting up, yanking a blaster out from under something inexplicably soft, finger locked around the trigger, shaking uncontrollably. His breathing was fast, broken and ragged; his face felt damp, and he tasted salt. Slowly, confusion, adrenaline, and fear making his comprehension move in slow motion, he gathered bits of information from his surroundings. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized with fading confusion and growing relief that he was at home in the Razor Crest, tangled in his thin blanket, the blaster in his hand yanked from where he always kept it under his pillow in sleep. He took a shaking, steadying breath, filling his lungs with blessed oxygen. It was only then that he heard the questioning squeaks, felt the warm body pressed against his side. The relief at seeing those big black eyes, the little green face laced with concern, took all the fight out of him. He realized he must have woken the kid with his writhing around; the kid had developed a habit of waiting till Din was asleep, then hopping out of his floating cradle and snuggling into Din’s bed.  
His breathing still irregular, still balancing on the edge of consciousness, praying that reality wouldn’t revert to nightmare, he unstrapped his breastplate (although Din had resigned himself to sleeping without a helmet, trusting to the dark to mask his features from the kid’s curiosity, he hadn’t felt safe sleeping without armor in years). He gathered the child into his arms, holding him to his chest, feeling the child’s small store of body heat seeping through the thin shirt he wore under all the leather and metal. He rocked gently back and forth, pressing the precious bundle close, till eventually the kid squirmed and squeaked and wiggled out of his grasp. Din held the child slightly away from him, gently running his for-once-ungloved hands over the delicate fuzzy ears, assuring himself that they were whole and soft and un-singed. After a few minutes the kid rubbed his eyes with tiny green fists, yawning.  
“You’re right...sorry to wake you up kid. Time for bed.”  
Din picked up the sleepy bundle, swinging his legs out of bed and standing up to put the child back in his pod. He stood there a second, reminding himself of the Mandalorians’ words when he had woken from nightmares those first months after his parents’ death: “you’re in no danger. Go back to sleep.” The simple, sterile, emotionless words were logical and theoretically sufficient, but the thought of putting his baby back down and surrendering to the menacing powerlessness of sleep was unbearable. He realized, for the first time since childhood, that the intense terror of misery on the other side of consciousness cannot be dealt with by logic. He sighed, rebelling against his upbringing. Maybe love IS distinguishable from weakness. Maybe fear is not something to deal with alone. He looked into the big black eyes, the delicate eyelids drooping with sleep.  
“Well, kid…” he jerked his head in the direction of his disheveled cot “there’s plenty of room…”  
The child cooed quietly, snuggling into Din’s chest, eyes fluttering shut. Something inside him that had gotten cold and hard while he doggedly buried his emotions as he adjusted to life in the guild started to melt. He laid the kid into bed, adjusting his floppy ears on the pillow, before lowering himself next to the little bundle. He curled around the child, HIS child, pulling him close. He took a deep breath, dredged up all the courage he possessed, and closed his eyes. As he drifted back into oblivion, he wondered if someday sleep would cease to be a struggle, and surrender could be sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much! Before you go, i have a couple quick notes!  
> 1\. I have personally always been a fan of the nightmare device/trope in stories, I feel like it gives a fascinating insight into the core of a character, and their true hopes and fears. There weren’t very many of these stories in the Mandalorian fandom on AO3 so I figured I’d add my own:)  
> 2\. I know Din eventually becomes very personally attached to and invested in the guild’s code and rules and values, but I always imagined that it was a really hard transition for him, coming from an apparently happy and loving family.  
> 3\. I got the idea for the line/concept “you’re in no danger child. Go back to sleep” from a story I read on AO3 called “Mandalorian Lullabies,” by w_k_smith  
> Go check out their work!  
> 4\. If you liked this story, consider leaving Kudos, or even a comment! Interaction from y’all makes my days so, so much brighter (and who couldn’t do with a little validation? Lol)  
> This is officially the first non-romance fanfic I have posted on AO3! If you’re a hopeless romantic like myself, make sure to check out my other works:) 
> 
> *deep exhale*  
> Thank you for reading! Have a fantastic day, darling!


End file.
